You may hate Jerry Jones, but the NFL & Texas would not be what they are today without him

Between the Netflix documentary that is currently in production, with his cooperation, and an in depth biography that is in the research phase, Jerry Jones is in the “legacy” part of his career.

Set aside your feelings, if you can, about the man and you may be able to acknowledge his legacy will include the influence he has had not just on a pro football team, but on our world.

By buying the Dallas Cowboys in 1989 it granted Jerry a point of entry into the world of sports. Since then he has exploited that entry for personal wealth, while changing sports to fit his ambitions of bigger, bigger, bigger, and endless profits.

Start just with North Texas.

“It isn’t even close to how it was when I came here in the early ‘90s Everybody was broke. the buildings were half empty or the construction was stopped half way through,” Jerry said the day FIFA announced it awarded AT&T Stadium nine matches for the 2026 World Cup.

“The banks were all broke. That’s what it looked like then. Now we are arguably the greatest place to be young, and that may be from 15 to 89. And it’s one of the greatest places on this earth for a future viability and for quality of life. I believe that strongly.”’

He may believe that strongly, but at least some of that statement is slight exaggeration. Jerry never caught a small fish; every fish he caught is a trophy.

What is not an exaggeration is that a city/region with no geologic point of sale - i.e. an ocean/beach, a giant lake, mountains, a big canyon, or even casinos - has worked its way into the conversation with Miami, L.A., NYC, Chicago and the rest of America’s tourist-destination cities.

North Texas is basically a series of strip malls and cookie cutter developments plopped in the middle of a prairie. Only through the sheer force of Jerry’s tornadic personality, and the help of so many others, has a region whose hook is no state income tax, mild winters and business-friendly laws is a national player.

That has been achieved through primarily entertainment, events, and sports.

The NFL, football, Dallas, Arlington, Texas, media, and so much of sports look the way they do because of Jerry Jones.

His team has not reached a conference title game in more than 20 years, let alone a Super Bowl, but, according to Sportico, the Cowboys are the most valuable franchise in North American sports, at $9.5 billion. (Imagine what they would be worth if the won playoff games?)

Use his arrival to the Cowboys in February of 1989, and the growth rate of the NFL, and all of sports, has far exceeded the pace of most businesses. He did benefit from the explosion of cable television, but his ambition to grow everything spreads across north Texas.

He will turn 82 in October, and while he has slowed down compared to when he bought the team, his influence on the Cowboys, the NFL, and North Texas, remains significant, and ever lasting.